Patriot SuperSonic 64GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Review

Introduction:

These days it is all about mobility. The average user looks at portability as a necessity along with speed being an equal component. For years manufacturers have been trying to squeeze the most out of their designs by using multiple flash chip designs in a dual and quad channel configuration. However, they were still limited by the interface technology. USB 2.0 has been the dominator for some time with the popular interface, but the limit of 480MB/s is just too slow for the massive amounts of data that we as end users are transferring in this fast growing time. End users want to have higher storage capacities without taking a long time to transfer the data.

USB 3.0 came on the scene a short time ago and has drastically changed the way we look at portable storage. With the new USB 3.0 specifications you can now transfer larger amounts of data quicker and more efficiently. With USB 3.0 you can transfer data up to 5Gbps speeds which allows transferring a gigabyte file as quickly now as it was to transfer a megabyte file when USB 2.0 was introduced. Since the inception of USB 3.0 we have seen more and more devices being built with this faster interface including thumb drives. One of those thumb drives is the Patriot SuperSonic series, which offers both a 32GB and 64GB version with read speeds up to 100MB/s and writes up to 70MB/s. This gives you larger portable storage with the fast transfer speeds of larger devices.

The particular model we are going to be looking at is the SuperSonic 64GB USB 3.0 drive model number PEF64GSUSB, which retails for approximately $199.99 currently. The SuperSonic drive is fully USB 3.0 compliant for faster transfer speeds and employs a quad channel design which maintains those speeds by writing data across multiple flash chips. If I don't have your attention yet, how about we dig right into the SuperSonic hardware design and start testing this little gem?

Closer Look:

The Patriot SuperSonic 64GB USB flash drive comes packaged in a black blister pack matching the sleek color scheme of the drive itself. On the front of the package there are the USB 3.0 logos along with a Quad Channel logo which are some of the main features of the SuperSonic drive. There is also the capacity which in this review is the 64GB version along with the maximum read and write speeds which are eye grabbing to say the least. On the rear of the package there are some more specifications of the drive along with some USB 2.0 to USB 3.0 comparison and read/write charts.

The SuperSonic Drive itself is sleek and black with an aluminum housing, which provides shock protection up to 15g keeping your sensitive data safe. On the front of the casing is the Patriot Memory logo and on the rear there is the SuperSonic logo with the 64GB capacity stamp. This particular drive uses a cap and does not have a retractile USB port, which means some of you may be losing the top to their expensive drive sometime, but this is definitely not a deal breaker. I particularly prefer to have a capped drive so it keeps out dirt and pocket lint keeping it safe. Looking down into the port you will see the plastics are colored blue instead of the normal white or black. This is to denote the USB 3.0 functionality of the drive and the increased speeds associated with the newer specification. Top all this off with a five year warranty and you have a drive that begs to be challenged.

Now that we have taken a close up look at the drive we can move on to the testing phase of the review.